1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for information-based self-organization of sensor nodes of a sensor network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Securing our borders as well as our facilities and community events are critical when the infiltration of a single individual can result in mass casualties. Individuals are armed now with unconventional weapons where the attack can follow closely behind the detection of the individual. The depth and accuracy of typical current surveillance systems are insufficient for these types of attack.
Wireless sensor networks are often touted as the future solution to these surveillance problems. The low cost of sensor nodes enables coverage of greater areas and redundancy for border and facility surveillance. The small form factor, wireless communication, and battery power enable a quickly adjustable and easily deployed system for time-dependent events. Concerns over limited bandwidth and processing have directed much research towards reducing its form factor and power use. Less byte intensive sensors such as acoustic, magnetic and seismic are pervasive in this community. Because of the low byte size of the information gathered by these types of sensors, it is feasible to transmit the information from these sensors back to a centralized base station for processing. Work in both wireless sensor networks and computer vision typically follows the conventional architecture of transferring data to a centralized base station for processing. When dealing with small amounts of information at controlled intervals, sending that information to the centralized based station data poll is feasible on the limited available bandwidth.
Conventional wireless sensor node platforms are typically limited by the inability to readily incorporate images and computer vision techniques where the relevant orthogonal information for surveillance resides. In addition, sending raw data from images to a centralized base station for processing could quickly overload the wireless communication. Therefore, there is a need for wireless sensor nodes which can process raw image data and communicate information regarding the images.
Research in communication has often focused on maintaining connectivity and maximizing bandwidth through the wireless channel between sensor nodes based on the cost in terms of power consumption of transmission and reception. However, using a conventional technique, a sensor node may send information about an event that cannot be used by a receiving sensor node. Therefore, power may be wasted by the sending and the receiving sensor nodes. Therefore, there is a need for an improved technique to establish communication links among sensor nodes that reduces communication. This technique should work with wireless sensor nodes.